zircon

I'm not a guitarist but I do use a lot of guitar samples (Shreddage) with virtual amps. I have to agree with Sixto that TH-1 sounds absolutely killer.

These criticisms makes no sense. By definition, a risk doesn't always pay off. That's why it's called a risk. Just about any good invention - ever - was preceded by failures. Failure is part of innovation and entrepreneurship. It's actually insulting to say that a company not known for taking risks with its franchises at all (instead playing it safe at every opportunity) doesn't deserve any credit for taking one just because YOU didn't like how it turned out. Again, by definition, if they didn't take the risk there would be 0% chance of a payoff. When companies are punished for risk-taking, innovation stagnates. Why do you think there are so many homogenuous FPS games on PC and next-gen consoles? It's because the punishment that gamers levy for taking risks is too high. They bitch, they whine, they don't give credit to companies for at least trying. So developers stop trying, and what you get is sequels, brown, and space marines. Don't like that result? Too bad. It's your own dumb fault for having the attitude that you have here. Even Yahtzee, the most cynical, bitter game reviewer I can think of that rips almost 100% of new games to shreds will still praise any developer who does something outside the norm... even when the result sucks.

Like it or not, most people remember the tunes to, say, Final Fantasy, Donkey Kong Country or Mega Man as opposed to stuff from the Amiga. If you don't believe me, just look at the % of remixes we get from the NES, Genesis and SNES (and specifically, Mega Man 2, Chrono Trigger, FF6...) compared to, say, C64, Jaguar, or whatever. The guide might not be a compendium of video game music knowledge but the way to introduce people to a new hobby or interest isn't to inundate them with information that they would most likely not find relevant or interesting.

I think P.Diddy sampled the Police song because it's among the most classic tracks out there in terms of the songwriting and production, and it really resonated with Puff. AFAIK he didn't earn a single dime off the track - basically all the track royalties went to Sting. It was really just written as a wistful goodbye to his good friend, and he picked that song to sample because it spoke to him the most. Cheesy maybe, but that's a legit reason for sampling.

64 bit plugins did not run in FL9.1 at all. Maybe you just thought you were loading the 64 bit versions but in fact were using the 32 bit versions. If you're having problems, definitely file bug reports so reflex can improve the wrapper.

I've only spent an hour or two with it, but I love it so far. Too many excellent changes to count.

It's a very simple pan flute sound - pretty low-quality. You could probably find this exact sample in any number of free soundfonts, so don't bother trying to re-synthesize it. Just check out sf2midi or various other soundfont sites for a pan flute or GM soundfont.

You don't want to use the pre-defined Send channels for this. When you use a pre-defined Send channel, you are always getting 100% dry signal and simply mixing in the wet signal. Here's what you want to do. Click on the first track (higlighting it) and look at the bottom of the mixer. You should see some arrows there, but the only one lit up will be the master track. This means that your first track is going directly into the master. Click the arrow at the bottom of the master track to deselect it - now, track 1 is going nowhere. With track 1 still highlighted, click the arrow underneath track 3. Now, track 1 is going into track 3, which is going into the master. Do the same with track 2 - deselect its master output and have it flow to track 3 instead. Once you've done this, track 3 will be the sum of tracks 1 and 2. You can then put your chorus on track 3 and do whatever else you want to it - this will process 100% of the signal from tracks 1 + 2.

Hmm... sounds like you might be best off with Wallander Instruments and SampleModeling sounds. Basically, they're synthesized brass (every instrument you could want) that sound very realistic. They are very expressive and give you a lot of control over how the sound is articulated. I'm not sure of any other libraries that would work really well for both orchestral and jazzy/ska styles. Check the demos of those out and see what you think! If you don't like those, a few other libraries came to mind - "First Call Horns" (more pop-oriented) and "Kick Ass Brass". Here's the latter;

It's definitely a sitar. However, they're running it through a filter - sounds like a lowpass with some resonance, and the resonance is boosting some frequencies that give it a more synthlike quality.

What kind of brass / what's your budget? Westgate has a nice downloadable brass collection which I believe is primarily focused on french horns for less than $200. Sounds fantastic. If you want pop horns, try WIVI (Wallander Instruments) and SampleModeling. If you can afford to pay a little more, VSL has a full Brass I collection which is quite in depth, or a downloadable Epic Horns thing if you JUST want that big french horn sound.

Vienna Symphonic Library Special Edition is a good choice, as is Quantum Leap Symphonic Orchestra Gold. This is if your budget is $500 or less.

ROFL, love this

Well, in many cases there are none, but Protodome was asking specifically about getting on Beatport. You do need to be on a label for that.

Yeah, PS4 is definitely an excellent game. I have the GBA Phantasy Star Collection (I-III) which has some crashing problems, but they're all basically an evolution or two behind 4, which perfected the formula. However, if you like old-school, challenging RPG gameplay, you might check them out.

You can get an excellent iMac for music production for about half of that budget - less with an educational discount, and even less if you get a slightly older model (still very functional), and a great music production PC for $1000 or less. That leaves a considerable amount of money for everything else. With regards to samples, you should just get Komplete 7 from Native Instruments when that comes out. It's something like $500 (again, possibly less w/ edu. discount) for an unbelievable amount of samples, synths and effects. You'll also want to pick either headphones or monitors - I personally recommend headphones to almost everybody, but you get what you pay for - and of course a ~$100 mic and ~$200 audio interface won't hurt either. That leaves, at worst, about $500-700 left to play with. You can spend that on a MIDI controller plus some other toys.

How about a video walkthrough? Recorded this as I was unboxing my new Roland V-Synth

Haha, love that Doug pic. Happy birthday, Stevo!

It was awesome to hear about this when you told us at Otakon that it was probably gonna happen; even more awesome that it did. CONGRATS, man! Nothing like hearing someone's dream come true

It's like you said - just get on a label. There are many labels with Beatport distribution, and not all of them are big names. I was able to get on a progressive breaks/trance label very easily with a single submission, so if you just search around I'm sure you'll find a label willing to take your stuff.

And here's a tutorial on how to use PaulStretch for yourself!

I remember showing this program to people about 4 months ago. I think Yoozer showed it to me first even before then. It used to be a little gem of sound design, but I guess everyone knows about it now The real fun begins when you start stretching material into the 50-100x range or more and mess with the window size and algorithm. I took a sample of a single palm mute on an electric guitar and turned it into the backing texture here (over 3 minutes long from a <1 second source): http://zirconstudios.com/music/wips/Scars%20of%20the%20Past.mp3

I started my track... finally

Interesting, how do you set up your YT account to collect ad revenue?

IMO, it makes sense to put your own music on YouTube for a few reasons. 1. A TON of people use YouTube to search for music they've heard via word-of-mouth. If someone tells you about a song, where's the very first place you go to check it out? YouTube, of course. 2. People will inevitably upload your music anyway, and there's nothing you can do about it. It's impractical to go after everyone that uploads your stuff, but what you CAN do is beat them to the punch by uploading tracks yourself. Maybe not *every* track but at least a few so that when people search, they not only get the version YOU want them to hear, they get it with your description, annotations, and links... not someone else's. This also draws views to your videos/channel and hopefully helps you get more subscribers later. 3. YouTube is a great social networking tool. The "Like" function, as well as favoriting and featuring videos, helps people share videos they've enjoyed, to say nothing of the Embed and Share functions. As for cover songs, technically speaking you're not allowed to release your own covers unless you make some kind of arrangement with the publisher(s). That being said, there are tons of cover songs on YouTube which are not authorized. I say go for it, but remember to check and see if the songs you're covering belong to very aggressive publishers. Some labels, for example, seem to crack down on unauthorized content fast. You can try to check this for yourself simply by searching on YouTube for other covers. If there are seemingly none, and the song is popular, it's probably because the unauthorized stuff got taken down.